Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines about President Bush’s teleconference with some of the troops stationed in Iraq yesterday:
FOX News - Pentagon Denies Talk With Troops Was Staged
ABC News - Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged
CBS News - All the World’s a Stage
Elites TV - Bush’s Teleconference With Soldiers in Iraq Was Staged
Huffington Post, NY - Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged
MTV.com - Bush’s Conversation With US Soldiers Was Rehearsed
San Francisco Chronicle - In carefully coordinated event, Bush tries to boost war support
Newsday - A Role Rehearsal
New York Times - In a Scripted TV Scene, Soldiers Reassure Bush
Guardian Unlimited, UK - Bush accused of staging chat with troops
MSNBC - Troops chat with Bush — after rehearsal
You’d never know from reading these headlines — or in most cases from the story following — that the teleconference was neither rehearsed nor staged. What did happen was that the soldiers involved discussed amongst themselves who was best qualified to answer certain questions should Bush ask.
One soldier even issued a rebuttal, saying that the only thing they did “rehearse” was passing the microphone around to make sure they wouldn’t accidentally strangle each other with the cord.
Fast forward less than 24 hours. Who’d a-thunk that NBC’s Today Show — the mainstay of the Mainstream Media — would get caught staging a little story of their own?
Newsbusters.org reports that while reporting on the flooding occurring in the Northeast, one Michelle Kosinkski had what turned out to be a not-so-bright idea:
In a deliciously ironic twist of fate, shortly before airing a segment aimed at embarrassing the Bush administration by suggesting that it had staged a video conversation between the president and soldiers in Iraq, the Today show was caught staging . . . a video stunt.
In the Bush/Iraq segment, Today screened footage indicating that prior to engaging in a video conversation with President Bush, soldiers on the ground in Iraq were given tips by a Department of Defense official.
But the only advice that the official was shown as giving was a suggestion to one solider to “take a little breath” before speaking to the president so he would actually be speaking to him. It was also stated that some of the soldiers practiced their comments so as to appear as articulate as possible. But there was no indication, or even allegation, that the soldiers were coached as to the substance of their comments or in any way instructed what to say.
Today’s timing couldn’t have been worse. A preceding segment focused on the incessant rains and ensuing flooding in the northeast. For days now, beautiful, blonde - and one senses highly ambitious - young reporter Michelle Kosinski has been on the scene for Today in New Jersey, working the story. In an apparent effort to draw attention to herself, in yesterday’s segment she turned up in hip waders, standing thigh-deep in the flood waters.
Taking her act one step further, this morning she appeared on a suburban street . . . paddling a canoe. There was one small problem. Just as the segment came on the air, two men waded in front of Kosinki . . . and the water barely covered their shoe tops! That’s right, Kosinski’s canoe was in no more than four to six inches of water!
Click the player below to watch the staged scene.
TD
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